Yeah the Rolling Stone of today, definitely not the Rolling Stone of 85.

Nope. All of those albums in the top ten have always been on greatest LPs of all-time lists. Rolling Stone, NME, Q, etc. There's not an offbeat choice to be found. In fact, in the entire NME top 100 for 1985 there's only a few idiosyncratic choices (the second Suicide record, for instance).

The Modernist wrote:Interesting to see how far The Beatles stock had fallen in 1985.Barney Hoskyns seemed to had a lot of sway over some of the writers -hence the high placings for The Band, Tom Waits and Van Morrison.

My own top three from there:1. Highway 612. Unknown Pleasures3. The Clash.

All superb.

The Beatles had been out of favour for nearly 10 years at this time hadn't they? Your parents music. It took another 10 years (thanks to Mojo/Oasis/Anthology) for them to attain untouchable status I reckon.

Hip Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands jive talkSomeone who is with itThe expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't dig what it means, no one can ever tell you.

I can. It's hard to put into words. It's just that there was a strong sense that we'd moved on, that what they did was fine but rooted in its time.

I think it was exactly that, they were still too recent, strange as it seems. Plus I think the punk attitude towards the 60s - self indulgent, hippie silliness blah blah - still held sway in 85. Even someone like Hendrix was viewed with suspicion.

Also thought it was strange there was no Bowie in there. I guess he was suffering the Tonight backlash.

The 60s stuff they do choose is stuff like The Band and Van Morrison, the "brown" stuff. But this was the year you started to get all those rootsy US bands ( I remember the UK music press went mad for the now forgotten Jason & The Scorchers) like Green On Red and The Long Ryders and so those choices chime with all that.

Mind you Lennon is in there. I guess that album again fits with punk values -brutal honesty, naked emotionalism, stripped down arrangements. It's a good album (though not one I've ever played much) but it's crazy to think it's better than every Beatles album.

Weird list, and it came out when I used to pay attention the NME. I would have thought VU, in 1985 NME brains, would be placed above the Band for god's sake. Contrarianism I suppose, since VU was "obvious" back then.

The aggressive disenchantment with the Beatles is very much of that time (and has stayed with me!).

Besides the Tom Waits and Band records, each of the top ten has meant a lot to me at different times (the Bob Dylan ones when I was quite young though). I vote Marvin Gaye.